


THE END OF A PERFECT DAY

by vanhunks



Series: THE MAN FOR ME - A series for JANEWAY AND PARIS [4]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 00:55:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7553953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanhunks/pseuds/vanhunks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fourth story in the series. Set immediate after the dinner in "An invitation to dinner". Tom is guilt-ridden, Kathryn is deeply mortified, and Chakotay just wants to kill Tom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	THE END OF A PERFECT DAY

**Author's Note:**

> The next story in the series is entitled "Uneasy lies the head".

* * *

Tom Paris strode from the holodeck. Most who knew him well would thought he was drunk the way he stumbled or staggered as he moved down the corridor. There might have been some truth in that as it would not have been unusual to see him in that state. However much he might have changed in the last years and mended his ways, tonight would have given some over-eager tongues enough grist to wag about seeing Tom exit the holodeck like that.

His closest friends would have been concerned, knowing that Tom hardly resorted these days to drinking when he was deeply disturbed about something. In his earliest days on Voyager, yes. That Tom they could envisage, but in these moments, as Tom walked to the nearest turbolift that would carry him to his quarters, it appeared that the normally, and mostly sober Tom Paris had been tippling himself to a standstill.

There might be those who would have said that it wasn't out of character for Tom Paris to walk around looking like he had too much to drink. Others, like his trusted friend Harry-I-choose-my-own-friends Kim, would have known immediately that something seriously was bothering Tom. It had to be very serious indeed for it to have caused the best damned pilot in the Delta Quadrant to stumble out of the holodeck after an evening that should have been the greatest event in Tom's life. Greater even than when he flew his first shuttle, greater than the first crush he ever had, greater than when the Captain of Voyager entrusted Voyager to his eager and capable hands.

Tom Paris stumbled down the corridor.

He blew it, was the refrain that hammered rhythmically in his head. Like his heartbeat, it kept up a steady pulse, the refrain punishing, accusing, thudding a drumbeat that kept up the images which flashed in his mind. Images of a profusion of colour, of dancers, of lively personalities who laughed and cavorted with glee, of caricatures who pointed fingers, images of her...

He shook his head in a futile attempt to dispel those images. He was glad for once that there were no crewmembers about in the corridors. He knew what he must have looked like. His face felt hot and flushed. His was the misfortune of cheeks that collected twin spots of red whenever he was embarrassed, or... stoned. If anyone saw him now, they would think he was drunk and running from something.

He was running, and running hard.

The captain's face loomed before him again, a face that was distraught, a face that flamed with mortification. He gave an involuntary cry and slumped against the bulkhead. Rubbing his brow with his long tapered fingers in a familiar gesture, he closed his eyes.

Go away! Away!

But her sad face remained, her eyes large and the sheen of tears that formed in them from the moment he stammered "I can't", shattered.

Go away he silently pleaded again.

The images kept coming. They taunted him, accused him, tried to grab and haul him around all over the floor of the Moulin Rouge.

Then Valentin and La Goulue danced past him. La Goulue flared her skirts, while Valentin tipped his hat in a mocking gesture. He hooked his arm through La Goulue's, giving Tom one last insolent stare before moving off.

And Toulouse Lautrec...

Tom didn't see what Toulouse-Lautrec had sketched - he was too flustered to notice, too distressed at seeing the pleasure dying slowly from the Captain's face. But that dirty look the artist gave him indicated clearly his disgust at the way Tom had handled the most important seconds of his life.

Toulouse-Lautrec might well have said, "This is Paris, Paris, or have you forgotten?"

No, he hadn't. That was what made him feel even more of a heel, what increased his mortification ten-fold. He gave deep breaths that hurt his chest as he tried to force those shattered blue eyes out of his mind.

Like an automaton he pressed the panel for the turbolift to open. He stood inside for a second, then his voice, hoarse and pained,

"Deck four."

He slumped against the wall of the lift.

Go away....

The Captain must have spent hours programming the _Moulin Rouge_. The Red Mill - 19th century gathering place of the rowdy, the desperate and the lonely, frequented by Toulouse-Lautrec... Tom knew how much time, effort and a certain amount of ingenuity it required to programme dialogue parameters, little details to make the holographic characters' responses authentic, original and believable.

He should know.

He programmed Sandrines.

And Chaotica.

The ray-gun.

That was why he felt like dying when the aristocratic Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec favoured him with such a look of disgust. That he, Tom Paris, could not look Kathryn Janeway in the eye and tell her what she was longing to hear. That he, Tom Paris, had to forget for a while that she was Captain Kathryn Janeway, made him feel the lowest of the low. That he, Tom Paris, acted like a jerk when the opportunity to turn his fantasy into reality, presented itself...

And Kathryn? _There, I called her KATHRYN...._

He wondered whether she was still there, or where she had gone to.

_"We're not in a command structure here, Tom. Call me Kathryn."_

That had been his undoing. From the moment she had given him that dispensation, he careened into a bumbling idiot, stammering embarrassingly that he couldn't do her bidding. Right up to that point, she had been Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship USS Voyager. Up to that point she had been his father's protégé, and Tom's superior, a brilliant strategist under whose direct command he stood. He was a pilot, bridge crew, an _ensign_ \- made one by her the day he disobeyed her direct order. Up to that point, thinking of her and calling her Captain was still his safety net, that little comfort zone where he could remain fantasizing about her and not carry that fantasy to reality.

What did he want? For that matter, what did she want?

What was he _thinking_?

Kathryn Janeway was then just the Captain who invited him to dine with her. Hell, it was what she did regularly with other crewmembers, in her attempt to get to know them better. She asked him, and gave him those few seconds that he had dreamed of for so long. For those few moments he had been contented on the one hand just being in her company, admiring her beauty, staring like a love-sick puppy at her flaming hair, and on the other...

Tom sighed as he alighted from the turbolift when he reached his deck.

He entered his quarters, still deeply pensive, then he snorted with disgust. Pensive. When last had he been given to so much serious introspection? Since he started having dreams about Kathryn Janeway? Illicit dreams in which he, lowly ensign, became her consort?

But it was Kathryn's instruction - instruction! that stripped away his carefully erected barrier, and for the most important seconds of his life, he didn't know how to handle the situation. For once in his life he didn't! In the Moulin Rouge, with the can-can playing with such gross irony, every real kiss, every real caress that he had been openly invited by Kathryn Janeway to follow through, lay glaring before him. She had been exposed and he - damn him! - for him it became a great yawning chasm that he himself made unbridgeable.

"Tonight, Tom Paris," he chastised himself, "you have been a prize fool."

***********

When Chakotay exited the turbolift at 2100, the first person he saw was Kathryn Janeway. He had, if truth be told, not expected to see her. Since early evening when he had been on the bridge, he thought of the excitement that had lain just beneath the surface of her normally inscrutable features. That was her practiced and polished guard she applied whenever she needed that poker face in place. She had used it to brilliant effect against that creep Kashyk; he had seen over and over how well it had worked for her whenever she faced this leader or that minister whose face appeared on the main viewscreen of the bridge.

He had seen her physically pull herself together within seconds after a crewmember died, or when she had been particularly unsettled about anything. The penalty, he thought, of being in command, the Starfleet drilling of years that saved many a commander, endeared many a captain or, alienated most of them. They were always thought of as men and women without feeling, lacking compassion and empathy. Tom’s father, he realised, perfected this art. Even he, Chakotay, on occasion when he was in the chair, could call an enemy’s bluff by just the correct impassive facial expression. It was something very few in Starfleet were born with, and most in Starfleet cultivated - the Picards, the Kirks - all had those inimitable manners about them with which they could outwit an adversary.

And now, Kathryn.

She had her poker face in place.

He knew her. He knew Kathryn Janeway better than anyone on this ship, and that included Tuvok. He knew exactly what her moods were, and to him, she would show her feelings most of the time, albeit it a little unwillingly. She could, like the best of them, disguise her deepest distress with just the right expression. Now Kathryn graced him with _that_ look.

She was either ready to prepare for the kill, or she was dying inside.

Kathryn Janeway, back at the doors of her quarters at an hour she should have been enjoying on the holodeck with Tom Paris, was dying.

He swiftly covered the few steps to where she stood, held her elbow and looked at her, a question in his eyes. Her voice was hollow as she gave him her codes and within second they were inside.

She jerked free of him and stood with her back to Chakotay.

He sighed. When she was ready to talk, she would. She walked with as much dignity as she could muster to her couch and sat down. Her hands rested at her sides on the seat. Her back was straight, but she bent her head, staring at the floor.

He waited.

After ten long minutes, she looked up at him. Only then he rushed quickly forward and sat down next to her. His hand covered hers, and even in the balmy temperature of her quarters, he could feel the light quivering of her fingers.

"What happened."

It wasn’t a question so much as it indicated that he knew something happened, and that he stated it as a fact.

When she finally looked at him, he swore under his breath. He knew without a shred of doubt that tonight, as soon as he left here, he was going to kill Tom Paris.

She allowed him to see her pain exposed before him.

When she spoke at last, her voice was soft, hoarse, with none of that mellowness he always associated with her expressions of deep emotion.

"I was a fool..."

"Kathryn - "

"A silly woman who thought that she could - "

She looked away then. He had already seen it. The other emotion that accompanied the pain -  her deep shame.

"Kathryn, don’t flog yourself," he tried to placate, but she swung round again to face him.

"You have little idea, Chakotay."

He didn’t want to tell her he experienced the same at her hands, but now was not the time. Never, was good enough. She didn't need to hear that from him. Ever.

"It didn’t work out."

"No," she said forlornly, "it didn’t."

Kathryn frowned, and he knew the moment she was going to break down.

He took her in his embrace, pressing her head against his chest.

He stroked her cheek, letting her warm tears run down his fingers. It was a soft crying, no histrionics, no sobbing, just breathing deeply and expelling breath, while her tears scalded his hands.

When at length the tears stopped, he remained holding her until she stirred again in his embrace. She moved so that she sat a little away from him, but her hand was still clasped firmly in his.

"Tell me."

She had gained some composure, but he knew that when he left here tonight, she would break down again. Still, she looked a little better now. Her eyes, though... He wondered how long that look of sadness would remain there. They were clouded, with a sheen of tears that lingered precariously as she tried to prevent them from falling.

She opened her mouth to speak. Chakotay sensed how difficult it must be for her. She had taken a huge gamble which didn’t pay off, he surmised. Tom... He was going to wring Tom’s neck.

"He can’t see _me_ , Chakotay."

She didn’t have to explain what she meant. He was the only senior officer - the only officer - who called her Kathryn. Kathryn was a woman with great allure, a woman with essence, beauty, finesse, hell, he could go on all night extolling her virtues. For all that, Tom Paris turned her down. And for what? Because he couldn't get beyond the Captain and officer and see into a lonely woman's heart.

He felt the anger built up in him, swelling into a furious ball that threatened to explode.

"He’s a fool."

"A fool not to take what I offered him on a platter?" she asked suddenly, a bitter edge to her voice.

"Kathryn..."

"I threw myself at him, Chakotay!"

"For heaven's - "

"He’s laughing right now," she said.

He took her in his arms again, and this time she gave a few racking sobs before she gathered herself again.

"I’m sorry."

"I know."

"I’ll be fine, Chakotay."

He badly wanted to believe her, but the look in her eyes would haunt him, and he hoped it would haunt that fool Paris. He didn’t want to leave her, but she recovered some of her composure and seemed set on being left alone. She appeared fine, but she wasn't. He sighed. She was hurting, and hurting really badly. He wondered if she had misjudged the depths of her own feelings for Tom. This was not someone whose ego had been bruised, this was not someone who could waive away the incident as something that happened to be unfortunate. This was Kathryn Janeway who cried because she was shattered by Tom’s response.

He wondered whether Kathryn was aware at all that she loved Tom. Her playful teasing, the easy banter about fantasizing had turned into an ugly joke. And the joke was on her.

She had fallen in love.

He knew what he had to do. So he took her hand again and squeezed it gently, a reassuring gesture that he would look out for her.

"Okay," he capitulated, and she gave him a sudden, interested look.

His own look said, "Don't you dare pry."

"I’ll see you in the morning."

When he rose, she came to her feet too and stood close to him, her palms against his chest.

"Chakotay," she said with a note of warning, "I don’t need others to fight my battles for me..."

She knew.

"Maybe you’re wrong, Kathryn," he said on an exasperated sigh, "for once, wrong."

"Chakotay..."

"I’ll see you in the morning," he said again, drawing her closer, pressing his lips against her forehead. He heard her soft sigh, then he let her go.

Kathryn stared long at the door after Chakotay vanished, then she walked to her bedroom and threw herself on the bed. She lay face down, so that only her muffled cries could be heard.

***********

Tom Paris, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, opened the doors of his quarters. He saw only fleetingly the red and black uniform. The next moment two hands gripped his front and pushed him forcibly against the bulkhead at the other end of the cabin. He didn’t have time to wonder how quickly with snake-like speed his back rammed against the bulkhead. All he saw was a face, red with fury, the flash of a tattoo, and the next moment, two hands clamped around his neck and he slid up the bulkhead.

He choked embarrassingly for a few seconds before he was released. The attack was so unexpected and so sudden that he couldn’t respond quickly enough to ward off Chakotay’s weight and large hands.

He coughed, then bent almost double and when he came up again, Chakotay stood menacingly in front of him.

"What - what - " he still stammered.  Tom hiccoughed as Chakotay pushed him against the bulkhead again.

"What have you done to her?" Chakotay bit out at last, still fuming and still more prepared to let his fists talk before his head could instruct his mouth. "What have you done!?"

"What - what do you mean?" Tom asked sullenly, unwilling to broadcast just how inept he’d been on the holodeck.

"What happened in there, Paris?"

Tom step forward, more like a stumble as he tried to regain his balance after Chakotay let go of him.

"It’s none of your business, Cha - "

"Damn you!" Chakotay interjected as he shoved Tom towards his couch, where the pilot slumped ungainly on it, head in his hands. Chakotay was for once surprised that Tom didn't defend himself. Was this the same man - lieutenant then - who shoved him on the bridge so that Chakotay went flying to the floor?

Chakotay peered at the pilot, threatening to beat him up. He noticed for the first time that Tom's hands were shaking, and whether it was from the first officer's initial drubbing, or just maybe that Tom felt some guilt at whatever he had done to Kathryn. Chakotay preferred to think the worst, not wanting to cut Paris any slack.

"Kathryn Janeway is the finest woman I know, the strongest and most fearless, the bravest and the most responsible. She is also the loneliest and the most vulnerable person in this quadrant, in spite of having a shipful of officers and crew who would die for her, you spineless rat! And tonight you, Paris, have all but destroyed any possibility of her - my best friend! - attaching herself to a crewmember in a way I - " and here Chakotay shoved Tom back against the backrest of the couch, "in a way that I have dreamed of having!"

It was an impassioned plea by Chakotay, underscored by his anger that the woman he cared for more than anything else, was hurting in a major way. He didn't want to see Kathryn hurt, had never thought that he'd see her eyes fill with the darkest clouds of sorrow. When those clouds moved away, they merely exposed her pain, a bleakness that made his heart bleed for her.

"I - I didn't mean to h-hurt her," Tom stammered, refusing to look Chakotay in the eyes. Tom rose from the couch, stood before Chakotay, unafraid now, and expecting Chakotay to try and deck him again.

"But you did, Paris, and I want to know just how you managed to put the shame in Kathryn Janeway's eyes."

"She's the Captain, for God's sake, Chakotay," Tom said heatedly.

"And?"

"Dammit, Chakotay!"

"I'm certain Kathryn didn't think of herself as the Captain there on the holodeck, right?" Chakotay blasted with equal heat.

"Yes, she did! She did, damn you!" Then Tom's shoulders slumped as he saw the disbelief in Chakotay's eyes. "No," Tom sighed. "No, she didn't," he whispered hoarsely.

"So? What could be wrong then? Did Tom Paris after all manage to see the Captain instead of Kathryn?" Chakotay's voice dripped sarcasm, and it wasn't lost on Tom, whose face flamed as his own anger took hold of him.

"What is it you want, Chakotay?" Tom asked, his blue eyes suddenly flashing again.

"I want the truth!" Chakotay seethed. "The truth, although I can see I shall have to provide you with the truth myself. You got cold feet, Paris. You saw a beautiful woman tonight, a woman, the _captain_ of this ship, who had chosen you - _you_! as the person she wanted to make a life with here.

"That is the word, isn't it, Chakotay? The _Captain_ ," Tom retorted with deliberate emphasis on 'Captain', "selected me from half the ship's crew, male or female, to be her _mate_!"

"Paris, I'll - "

"Yeah, what, Chakotay? You'll kill me? What am I? A common ensign under her command? She busted me, remember? Busted me! She is my commanding officer, a Captain, dammit, and she _chose_ me - your words, Chakotay, your words - to bed her."

"You know, Tom, there's no need to be so coarse, it doesn't become you, and it is an insult to the - "

But Tom it seemed, was rolling now. He poked Chakotay roughly in the chest, pushing the First Officer so that he was forced to take a step back. Tom was angry, angry because Chakotay had, in part, hit on the truth.

"What does she want of me, Chakotay?" Tom asked, almost screaming aloud. "What?"

"She needs you, Tom, as if you didn't know," Chakotay replied, advancing on Tom again.

"For what?"

"Dammit, Tom, I don't have to spell it out for you, and neither, I suspect, did Kathryn Janeway have to spell it out for you. You are deliberately cheapening her motives, diminishing every good intention she had - "

"Chakotay, get real! Look around you on this ship. Here's me, Tom Paris, one time lieutenant, made _ensign_ literally, I might add, by her hand, and I must bed Kathryn Janeway when she needs to be bedded. She snaps her fingers, and I will be ready. Only," Tom snorted with disgust, "only when she needs to unwind. God, Chakotay, are you blind?" Tom's eyes were red, as if he wanted to cry, and Chakotay felt almost sorry for him. But right now Tom was also crude, insulting.

"No, I'm not blind, Tom, but you are. You left a devastated woman on the holodeck, a shattered woman who wants to die of shame because she dropped her guard for you - "

"Chakotay! All I will ever be is the Queen's eunuch, to service her and - "

Tom didn't even see Chakotay's fist snake out. The next thing stars exploded behind his eyes as he keeled to the floor. As he fell, Tom registered with shock that his jaw cracked and then the pain hit him.

The pain ripped through him, and when the room stopped turning, Chakotay hovered above him. Tom was hauled to his feet in a swift move. He didn't have time to rub his cracked jaw as Chakotay shook him like a dog.

"S-stop..." Tom croaked, then he groaned and twisted his face in pain. Any movement of his facial muscles left him dazed.

"Never... _never_ speak about Kathryn Janeway in the manner you have now, Tom. I swear by the spirits, I'll kill you with my bare hands! You understand? I will kill you!"

"L-let me go," Tom said with difficulty. Chakotay let go of him so suddenly that Tom stumbled backwards.

"She is a lady with great dignity, and that is what she deserves, Paris. Nothing less."

"I - I'm s-sorry. I - "

"Don't say anything more that you might regret, Paris."

Chakotay looked at the pilot and thought that Tom didn't know how lucky he was. The finest woman of his acquaintance had fallen in love with the man standing in front of him, and Tom rejected what Kathryn was willing to share - a life with Tom Paris. He felt his anger abate, rubbed his knuckles, then sighed.

"Tom," he said finally, on a much more amenable note, "I know you find it difficult to see beyond the uniform and four pips, to see the woman who is lonely, to see a woman  who just wants to be loved, and not the Captain whose orders you must follow. But let me tell you - no one calls her "Kathryn" unless she invites that person to. Some years ago, she invited me to do so, and I guess," Chakotay said on a note of insight as the knowledge dawned on him, "she gave you that privilege..."

Tom was too stunned, too pained to say anything, so he just nodded.

Chakotay felt a tad better, knowing that both Kathryn and Tom had a difficult path to navigate, one that was strewn with thorns.

He sighed again, then said, sounding slightly apologetic,

"You'd better get yourself to sickbay. I think I heard a crack when my fist connected."

"Perhaps," Tom said slowly, "I deserved it - "

"Oh, you deserved it, Paris. You deserved it. Don't you ever dare speak in such disparaging tones about the woman we both care a great deal about."

Tom closed his eyes for a second. Chakotay knew.

"I - yes... I'm sorry..."

"So you should be. Kathryn Janeway is a fine lady."

"A queen," Tom whispered with some pain. But Chakotay, who had turned to leave Tom's quarters, didn't hear.

Long after his doors had closed again, Tom moved.

"Yes, she's a queen," he whispered again, "and I ruined what was a perfect day."

***********

 END


End file.
